


In Memoriam

by vyrenrolar



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Blood, F/F, F/M, Gen, Injury, Major Character Injury, Meta, Metagaming, Multi, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Reincarnation, other characters not mentioned in tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8123902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyrenrolar/pseuds/vyrenrolar
Summary: Commander Shepard thinks back on the lives she's lived, the many faces she's worn. She thinks about the loves she's found and the friends she's lost.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Shepard relives the same few years over and over again, saving the galaxy every time. I'll add more explanation if it's needed.

Shepard is in pain. She is lying under concrete and steel, miles beneath the sky, waiting for it to start again. She knows she doesn’t have much time left in this life, now that she’s come to, and all she can do is wait. She uses the time she has left to remember, to think back on all the lives she’s lived.

She settled on saving Kaidan pretty early on in the process. She loved him in a way she never quite loved Ash, even when she went through it all as a man. Lord, but it had been weird the first time she woke up with stubble. With a deeper voice, with shoulders so wide she got shot more than once for not being covered enough in a fight. She got used to it, though. She got used to it all, after a while.

The first few times, she had played nice. Been decent to the Council, respectful, even. She went out of her way to help everyone she could, even putting the hunt for Saren on hold so she could help the civilian of the day. But after three or four times of hearing those bureaucratic assholes put her down like so much pyjak shit, she had had enough. She started lashing out, just a little at first, just enough to let some of the frustration steam off her skin.

Her skin fascinated her. Her own skin...she could barely remember what it had looked like when she started this mess. Could barely remember what  _ she _ had looked like...Sometimes, she’d wake up and it would be alabaster pale, too easily burned in the sun of whatever planet she and her team landed on. Sometimes it would be darker, as though she had a constant tan. Sometimes it would be ebony black, like the spaces between the stars. It stopped mattering, after a while. Her eyes, though...She stopped looking at mirrors after the first few times.

It didn’t help that she kept remembering things differently. Not just the saving the universe parts, but the other things. The things she didn’t get to relive. Sometimes she’d forget her little sister’s name, because she’d never had a little sister, right? She remembered growing up on    
Earth, growing up on a colony world, growing up a spacer. She thought that was how it started. With her being a good little Navy brat, growing up to be just like Mom. But now there were dozens of parents, hundreds of lives she had lived before getting to Eden Prime, before watching her life go to hell.

She supposed hell was the wrong word. Maybe it was some sick kind of purgatory. Maybe she had messed up so badly somewhere along the way that the universe decided to stick her in this mess, living through it all over and over and over again. Through Eden Prime, through Virmire, through Cerberus.

After about the tenth time, she had started taking stupid risks. She knew she wouldn’t die before the end, so why not  _ live _ a little. Not that it was really living, she’d think after yet another one night stand with a nameless soldier. She ran herself ragged, even let everyone die a couple of times. She just wanted to  _ feel _ something. Anything, really. Anything that would change it, give her some sort of variety.

It wasn’t that she didn’t feel at all. Sometimes she felt more than she thought her heart could hold. She’d managed to fall in love with every single member of her team at least once. Sometimes they would even fall in love back.

She started recruiting James earlier. She’d tell the Illusive Man she wanted him for her team, and he’d nod like he knew something she didn’t. She’d stopped paying attention when he talked after sometime around number six. It wasn’t like he ever changed his tune. But she’d get James, or at least meet him, and eventually, sometimes, it would happen. She had to be careful, though, because Kaidan almost never understood the idea of being in love with more than one person. The times he did, though...Those were good rides.

Sometimes she’d send Kaidan out instead of Jenkins, and she’d go through the whole thing with the young Marine by her side. He was one of the only ones who didn’t abandon her when she spent her time with Cerberus. He loved her, worshipped her, and it was nice. He always tasted bittersweet, though. She could never figure out how to save everyone.

She thought, after a while, that maybe that’s what was wrong. Maybe, if she managed to keep everyone alive, she’d be allowed to move forward. Whenever she tried, though, she always ended up dying herself, and restarting before she got to the end. It always left an uneasy feeling in her gut. So she let that theory go. Maybe she’d go back to it after another twenty years of this. Maybe not.

She felt stronger, sometimes, in the beginning. Like her body remembered what her mind did, for once. Sometimes they would get stronger too, the geth and the collectors and the reapers. It always broke her, a little bit, when she had to start killing geth again. It was always so soon after losing Legion, and even on her numb days that didn’t stop hurting. She hated losing friends.

Losing EDI, though...god did that hurt. She’d started making it a point to ask Tali to make a paper copy of the AI’s code, just in case something happened to the ship. Tali never quite understood, but she always did as requested. She loved Tali, and she loved Garrus. She loved seeing them in each other’s arms when they didn’t end up in hers.

She’d gotten better at keeping it a secret. Her voice no longer caught in her throat the first time she met Garrus, feeling a kinship he would not know for three more years. She stopped calling Tali “vas Normandy” before she earned the name, and she stopped touching Kaidan before he invited her to do so.

Sometimes, she refused to let anyone in. She’d use those times for the more self destructive habits she’d picked up over the decades, knowing no one would be close enough to stop her. She’d choose Control, then, or Synthesis. It never mattered. Always, it would end. Always, a few hours after she left the Citadel, however she left it, she’d find herself back on the bridge of the SR-1, summoned by Captain Anderson to be briefed about a mission she’d already completed. She was never that cruel to Chakwas, though. Always did have that drink with her. A couple of times, she got drunk enough to tell the doctor what was happening to her. Chakwas would listen, she would always listen, and she’d squeeze Shepard’s arm and tell her it was time to go to bed.

She tried not to tell people, otherwise. She’d done it a few times, in the beginning. Anderson, Kaidan, Joker...It never seemed to stick in their heads, though. It was almost like the universe wouldn’t  _ let _ them know.

The universe. She’d tried a few dozen religions, over the years, searching for something to change the end, to get her past those moments in the rubble. She’d spent hours listening to the Hanar, days questioning Garrus about spirits and the nature of faith. She had no idea why this happened to her, why she kept living and dying and living the same few years over and over again. She’d asked Vigil a few times, as well as the AI on the Citadel. Hell, she’d even asked Legion, once, hoping that maybe the combined computing power of an entire species could help her sort it out. Nothing ever clicked, though, no explanation ever seemed right. She’d settled, after about fifty years, on blaming the universe as a whole. She’d stopped looking for explanations a long time ago.

She lies in the rubble, waiting for the familiar jolt in her navel. She tries not to move, knowing that it would only make her internal bleeding worse. She still cared about that, sometimes. She waits, silent, for the journey to begin again, just as it always does. That’s one thing she’s come to depend on, after everything. No matter what she does, which road she takes, what decisions she makes, she always gets to do it all again.

She thinks back, over this life. She’d done well, she thinks, been happy, even. She’s managed to have healthy, stable relationships with Kaidan, James, Liara, and Joker. Joker had still fallen for EDI, and Kaidan had fallen in love with Steve. He had asked her a few days ago if he could propose to the other man. She had grinned and kissed him and said, “Of course, love. Of course.” She had gotten close to Tali, to Garrus, to Wrex and Grunt. She wouldn’t quite call those relationships romantic, this time around, but they had been wonderful all the same.

She and Jack had become, if not the best of friends, then the most trusted, this time around. God, she’d had so many friends this time. Miranda, Jacob, Samara, Thane...Not to mention her crew. She had talked to all of them this time, had taken any opportunity available to get them to talk about their lives. She learned about their goals, their fears, their favorite foods. She had watched her engineer fall in love with Tali, had encouraged him to talk to her about his feelings. She had married them a couple of weeks ago, just days after performing the same ceremony for Tali and Garrus. The Quarian was overjoyed to have not one, but two husbands. No matter how many times Shepard lived, she would never get tired of Tali’s infectious laughter.

It’s not that she hasn’t lost people this time; she has. It was war, after all, and people died. She’d accepted that long ago. But she’s done her best, she thinks, and she’s been happy. She’s happier than she’s been since she started this whole mess. At peace.

She smiles to herself, hums a lullaby that Liara had taught her a few lives back. She is happy, in this moment, dozens of years after she started this journey. She sighs contentedly, paying no heed to the pain in her side. She thinks that if this is all she gets, maybe it’s enough. Maybe it’s enough to save the galaxy again and again, fighting side by side with the people you love. She closes her eyes and waits for it to begin again.

Liara’s voice cuts through her serenity. “Kaidan! James! I’ve found her!” Shepard gasps as the weight of concrete and steel disappears. She looks at Liara, confused, then at the approaching marines. Liara pulls the commander into an embrace and the pain and the blood do not matter because  _ this has never happened before _ .

James kneels down and opens medigel packs onto all her visible wounds. Kaidan sits next to him and takes her hand in his, kisses her palm. They all marvel at her conscious state, tell her she’s never allowed to save the galaxy again, tell her how much they love her.

She sits up after her bones have stitched themselves back into place. She looks to her lovers, mouth open, unable to ask the question in her throat. Liara cups her face and kisses her gently. “It’s all right, Shepard. I know. I saw everything, when we joined back at the base. The lives you’ve lead, the sacrifices you’ve made. I saw it all, and…”

“And she told us,” Kaidan chimes in. “God, what you’ve been living through, it’s insane. But she told us, and we knew, ah, that is…” Kaidan trails off, choked with emotion.

James speaks, now. “We knew that if you destroyed the Reapers, you’d survive. So we landed, and we prayed, and when the Citadel came down…”

“We started looking. Joker and Steve did flyovers in a couple of shuttles, and we’ve had hundreds of people combing through rubble.” Liara presses her forehead to Shepard’s.

Kaidan moves closer and kisses her cheek. “We thought that maybe, if we found you, you wouldn’t have to do it again. You wouldn’t have to be alone again.”

Shepard laughs. She laughs, and she cries, and James has to open more medigel. She kisses them all, over and over, and she laughs until she can hardly breathe. She’s done it. After all these years, all these lives, she finally gets to find out what happens next. She stands, and pulls them up with her, and starts walking towards a nearby shuttle, hoping it’s the one with Joker on it.

 

Would you like to save the game?

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably edit this a bit more, but I'm posting it for now. Let me know what you think!


End file.
